January - QRL Core Contributor Summit 2020 — Amsterdam

Overview

From January 15–19th, the The QRL Core Contributors gathered in Amsterdam at Meet Berlage and covered a wide range of topics. Everything from adoption, to the UI/UX of our ever expanding wallet, right down to the gritty details of ensuring all components will be set in place for a smooth hard fork with a tentative date of February 25th, 2020.

While the full agenda won’t be posted, some of the results of the summit are below with more on their way.

Topics

• In attendance
• Bromine — The upcoming hardfork
• Project Mercury — Ephemeral Messaging System (EMS) SDK & proof-of-concept code
• A new foundation Youtube channel

In attendance

A total of 8 people attended, with 2 remote.

• Adem Bilican: Mobile Developer
• Jack Matier: Director of Communications
• James Gordon: Documentation Lead
• JP Lomas: Full stack developer
• Michael Kolenbrander: Technical Solution Architect
• Michael Strike: Director of Outreach
• Peter Waterland (remote): Core Developer
• Kaushal Kumar Singh (remote): Core Blockchain Developer

Bromine — The upcoming hardfork

Over a year ago today, mainnet, henceforth given the codename Actinium, was launched, and due to planning and foresight, has been a fully functioning blockchain from day zero. This is something that should be expected with any enterprise grade blockchain project.

With Bromine we’re looking to replicate that, with proper planning and forethought. Ensuring we have all the components (and checklists) in place for a successful migration.

Part of this has been documentation and developer support, some of which has been released already such as the QRL Docker Node.

While still in the early stages, the QRL Docker Node is slated to make launching a node and its related API’s, whether it’s mainnet or testnet, a repeatable and reliable process available on Windows, Linux and OSX.

Project Mercury — Ephemeral Messaging System (EMS) SDK & proof-of-concept code

LatticeTX will be available in this upcoming hardfork, and with it comes the ability to launch your own fully post-quantum secure ephemeral messaging service using our SDK (Software Development Kit).

Along with this, one of the much requested components of bringing in developers is more proof of concept code. With that in mind, JP Lomas and Adem Bilican mocked up a proof-of-concept QRL Ephemeral Chat using the SDK over the last few days of the summit.

Code can be found on github: https://github.com/theQRL/ephemeral-chat-poc

This is still very much a WIP, so when it’s ready to be pulled and played with, we’ll have a separate announcement which highlights different things you can do (hint: it’s not just chat applications).

A new foundation Youtube channel

Starting fresh in 2020, Michael Strike has, in a phoenix like fashion, and in response to frequent community feedback (potential new trend?), founded a new* QRL youtube channel with a few initial videos and more on the way.

Already covered are videos on RandomX (the mining algorithm QRL will be switching to), and XMSS OTS key usage and best practices with many more on the way.

Are there topics you’d like to see covered or are willing to cover/collaborate on? We’d love to see your ideas in our discord or subreddit communities. For collaborations (or if you’d like to keep suggestions confidential in nature), either reach out to a team member, moderator or email at support@theqrl.org.

Finally, as the youtube phrase goes, be sure to like and subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCS2PP3kR9APyRUa9kRH8-uA/videos

** During the audit process for the project, best practices for credential storage, access, and authentication were reviewed for critical project services. Unfortunately, not all of these best practices were applied to non-mission critical accounts. As a result, the credentials for the YouTube channel were ultimately no working key was found. We did check under the car seats, under the rug, and sock drawers, but it ultimately it was lost. Internal processes have already been revised. On a positive note, we did find some Quanta in Jack’s couch. As penance for this self-imposed infraction, we have left that Quanta inside the couch below for the first person to find it. And yes, this is Jack’s actual couch. First person to find the Quanta may keep it (the Quanta), and of course has bragging rights.*

A couch for ants? To take a closer look see here: https://gist.github.com/jackalyst/b4d0f44ead8b0c6537e4216cadd4692e

Closing thoughts

The summit has been a productive one and is something we’d like to do more of including extending the latter development/hackathon/play part of our summits to the wider community, especially for those looking to build upon our platform.

This would give people direct access to the core team, which makes it easier to bounce off thoughts and ideas.